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| - Tokyo stocks opened lower on Thursday, extending falls on Wall Street on rising worries about the coronavirus, as France and Germany announced new restrictions and US cases continued to climb. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index dropped 0.94 percent, or 219.02 points, to 23,199.49 in early trade, while the broader Topix index was down 0.91 percent, or 14.68 points, at 1,597.87. "After US shares nosedived on worries over coronavirus infections in Europe and in the US... the Japanese market is seen dropping with investors disheartened by these moves," Toshiyuki Kanayama, senior market analyst at Monex, said in a commentary. France announced a new month-long national lockdown and Germany imposed drastic new curbs on people's daily lives, as many epidemiologists have been warning for weeks that European governments have lost control of the latest outbreaks, making lockdowns almost inevitable. The US has also seen a big jump in new infections across the country. The dollar fetched 104.33 yen in early Asian trade, against 104.31 yen in New York. In Tokyo, automakers were lower with Honda declining 1.31 percent to 2,448 yen and Toyota trading down 1.13 percent at 6,817 yen. Sony rallied 6.07 percent to 8,749 yen after the electronics and game giant revised up its full-year forecast citing growth in key sectors. Hitachi was up 1.95 percent at 3,616 yen after it booked a better-than-expected second-quarter operating profit. Central Japan Railway dropped 2.78 percent to 12,950 yen after it announced a worse-than-expected full-year operating loss forecast, while East Japan Railway was down 2.02 percent at 5,622 yen after its second-quarter operating loss was worse than market expectations. On Wall Street, the Dow ended down 3.4 percent at 26,519.95, while the broader S&P lost 3.5 percent and the tech-rich Nasdaq dived 3.7 percent. kh/sah/qan
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